Bellemare's ink can't be dated, expert testifies

QUEBEC - The verdict is in, but the Bastarache commission isn't any farther ahead.

Try as she might, Quebec government lawyer Suzanne Cote was unable to get an expert in the obscure field of ink dating to connect the dots that would show Marc Bellemare somehow rigged or tampered with the only evidence he possesses of his allegations of influence peddling in judicial nominations.

The one thing the expert, Luc Brazeau, was able to say was that crucial parts of the note written on a piece of cardboard in which Bellemare refers to pressures from Liberal fundraisers were written in a different ink -a more luminescent blue -and that means in theory that they were added to the document after the first part of the note was written.

But the commission already knew that.

Bellemare testified Aug. 24 that he wrote about 75 to 80 per cent of the note the day he resigned from politics, April 27, 2004, and added more bits to it over the next few days before tossing the whole thing in a drawer to be retrieved seven years later when he went public with his story.

He wrote the first part of the note while sitting at home watching a hockey game.

As for the most interesting question, the actual dates of the script and add-ons, the commission got nothing out of Brazeau because he testified that they just can't be determined.

He has carried out more than 300 similar tests in his career, but in this case there's not enough ink and it's not the right type for dating. No technology exists to date it, either, he told lawyer Cote, who aggressively questioned Brazeau before commission chief Michel Bastarache, a former Supreme Court justice, stepped in and said she should save her questions for Bellemare himself.

"Is it possible to determine how much time there was between the use of one ink and the use of the other?" Cote demanded.

The unflappable, Brazeau, who works for the Canada Border Services Agency and has an extensive professional CV, said: "Since we can't do dating, we can't determine the time lapse."

Brazeau did say there are at least three different inks -two blues and a black -on the cardboard, which points to the use of more than one pen, perhaps three, a statement that quickly became the cause of laughter around the commission's coffee machine.

As one lawyer later joked, is there anyone who doesn't have a drawer full of pens -all different colours -in the house, any of which could be grabbed to dash off a note?

Bellemare said it himself three weeks ago with his memorable line about changing pens as he wrote notes alone late at night: "Blue Tuesday became black Monday."

By yesterday afternoon, the commission's bid to test the validity of the cardboard notes by bringing in Brazeau was being described as an exercise in futility.

"This is ridiculous," Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois snapped on her way out of a party caucus. "It discredits institutions. The commission is on the (judicial) nomination process, and now we're putting on trial the one who levelled the accusations.

"Mr. Bastarache said he is not looking for a guilty party, but I think this commission started off thinking it had a guilty party and now they are trying to prove he is.

"We are wasting the money of Quebec citizens by calling in an expert who could not demonstrate or prove anything except maybe coming up with the suggestion that everyone write with the same col-our pen so that we don't have any problems."

And so the commission plods on today (Thursday, Sept. 16).

Four weeks into the hearings and headed for a $6-million tab, it has yet to hear from half of the 40 witnesses it wants to talk to.

The use of the expert, however, forces it to spend more time with Bellemare, even though technically he ended his testimony two weeks ago.

The former justice minister is to take the stand again this morning because he must have a chance to answer new questions raised by the expert's analysis.

For instance, if he was so traumatized by the pressures Liberal fundraisers Franco Fava and Charles Rondeau put on him to name the right judges, why didn't he write it down on his first go at the note the day he resigned, when his memory was still fresh?

And why did he not add to the note his now famous meeting with Premier Jean Charest over a bottle of Perrier on Sept. 2, 2003, to complain about the pressures until later -if that is indeed the case?

The commission resumes its work at 10:30 a.m. today (Thursday, Sept. 16).

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